If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.

Real beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.

If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works.

The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance.

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes.

The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal.